Victoria Perich
22 September 2015
Forms of Literature
“Why Can’t I Leave You” AI’s poem “Why Can’t I Leave You” is about a woman who is trying to find reasons to stay with “him”. She can come up with a thousand reasons to leave but once it comes down to her saying her final goodbye she comes up with a two thousand reason to stay with him. Their relationship is just a repetitive process of contemplation, whether or not to stay with him or finally build up the courage to leave him. At the end of this reoccurring emotional battle of figuring out their problems, they never find out the solution instead they resort to sex. One of the main problems in their partnership is their financial circumstance. “Dressed as always in that red shirt, stained …show more content…
“There is safety in that, so much that I can never get past the packing,” this is one of the reasons that she is staying with him. She is used to doing things with him and seeing him every day that she does not want to leave her comfort place. She has in her head that he will need her too much if she leaves, “as I try to leave you again. I smooth the hair back from your forehead I think with your laziness and the drought too, you’ll be needing my help more than ever.” Although she had a lot of reasons to leave she also has many to stay. One of the most important ones is that she loves him. AI”s, “Why Can’t I Leave You?” uses contradiction a lot through the poem. The speaker talks about wanting to leave and then once it’s time to leave she can’t do it so she is contradicting herself. It goes from talking about how lazy he his with planting the crops to “I undress, then put on my white lace slip for you to take off, because you like that”. She is now doing stuff that he likes in order for everything to be better. This relationship is a repetitive process of contemplation. This is shown when she says, “As I try to leave you again.” It is proving that she has tried to leave him before but failed and is still with him. It goes from fighting with him and leaving to trying to find reasons to stay and then finally sex. Which is just one repetitive